Nitish’s Mahadalit terror tag on Lalu
RJD terms split bid ‘illegal’

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Chief minister Nitish Kumar addresses journalists at the airport after his return from New Delhi on Wednesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Feb. 26: Chief minister Nitish Kumar and his JD(U) today joined Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary in attacking Lalu Prasad for allegedly “terrifying” the Mahadalit community while the RJD trained its guns on the ruling establishment for diverting the main issue of engineering “illegal” split in the party.

“My house was stoned yesterday at the behest of the RJD president (Lalu). The attack on my house was aimed at terrifying me, my family and my community — still deprived and away from the mainstream of the society. It was to coerce me to alter my decision to create a separate group of 13 RJD MLAs,” Chaudhary told reporters.

Asked how he notified the “separate group” when he had only 13 against the required number of 15 MLAs to split the RJD and why he was not making public the application signed by 13 MLAs to clear the air, Chaudhary said: “I have issued an interim notification. It was based on the valid constitutional provisions.”

The Speaker, however, did not reveal the details and content of the “rebel” RJD legislators’ signed application demanding their merger with the JD(U).

Stepping up his attack on Chaudhary, Lalu said: “Chaudhary was playing to the gallery after butchering the democratic and legislative norms and traditions. His name figured in the murder of our former party MP Rajesh Kumar from Gaya in the reports of then IG and DIGs which were still part of the police records. Nitish has shielded him by giving him constitutional chair to perpetuate his dirty game of defection.”

The RJD chief alleged that Chaudhary had officially appointed one Murari Yadav, a Maoist in the police records, his private assistant and had travelled with him to Japan. “As a Speaker, he should clarify the questions we have raised on executing farcical split in the RJD rather than raising the bogey of attack on the Mahadalit community, which has been close to my heart for whole of my life,” Lalu said.

Abdul Bari Siddiqui supplemented Lalu by saying: “It was Lalu who had made Chaudhary a minister first in his cabinet in the 1990s. Chaudhary has also been an RJD president in the past.

The RJD and Lalu are known for social justice, giving a voice to the deprived sections and making them stand straight in the society.”